so if we run out our last understanding, as in the 17 century hadtwo understandings of the "TRUTH" one was religious and the other scientific.. today, we have but one truth and that is scientific butthat "TRUTH" has become so technical it is beyond the understandingof the average person but the religious understanding of the 'TRUTH" thatno longer exists... you can see it in CINO'S, Christians in name only, they claim to be Christians but they oppose just about everything that Jesus offered...compassion for your fellow man, charity, love, feeding the poor, all of these things the modern CINO whois conservative, opposes.....

so to continue on... we have the modern "TRUTH" but that islost today in its modern complexity and technical aspects....so, we don't have a single truth like religion the 17 century had or evena second truth like science......

so, this is the modern problem, we have no readily available "TRUTH" that the modern person can turn to... science is hard...to understand science requires time and effort and most people wanttheir "TRUTHS" handed to them, which explain the hold that religionsstill have on people.... it doesn't require any effort to reach........

so how do we solve this modern problem?

one possibility is we find a third "TRUTH"... and this is evident in our modernworld today.... we see people seeking and struggling to discover their 'TRUTHS". the decade of the 60's was one such collective effort to find the "TRUTH"...We have people today who are traveling from religion to religion and drug to drug and using modern escape techniques like sex and booze and drugs in an effort to either discover the "TRUTH" or to avoid the problementirely..........

or we have people try something new which is searching for the "TRUTH" and by somehow convince them that the hard work needed to find the "TRUTH" isworth it and somehow to justify that hard work.....the problem with that is, the entire modern world is built in such a wayas to make finding the 'TRUTH" very difficult by oneself....

we have to spend our lives working and struggling to make ends meet, who has time to find the "TRUTH" when we are too busy just trying to survive and that is by designed... the system is rigged to prevent people from learning new "TRUTHS" because that could cause chaos within the system and this cannot be allowed to happen becauseanything that affects profits is prevented because that is the focusedof the modern world, not finding the 'TRUTH" but in making moneyand that is what the system cares about, profits.........and not the "TRUTH"....

so we few, we happy few, for whatever reason, have the time, energy andability to do the thinking for the people and we search for the 'TRUTH" onethat can replace the "TRUTH" that has existed for centuries...

we have had religion and that is disappearing and we have science and few understand science and so we must pick up the slack and discover the new 'TRUTHS" that will become the next ideologies and the next ism's and next paradigms..... we few, we happy few.... we search for our 'TRUTHS'and in doing so, we speak for the human race....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

The search for the truth drives a good deal of life....Philosophers and scientist and artist all strive for the "TRUTH"and each in their own way search for the "TRUTH"...

Artist look for the "TRUTH" as the Greeks looked for "TRUTH" "TRUTH" is beauty.... and by finding beauty, we find "TRUTH"...

The ism's and ideologies and paradigms of the world are another means to search for the "TRUTH"..... We use these ism's ideologies and paradigms as a map, a guide to find the "TRUTH".......

For each, the "TRUTH" is something different....For a philosopher a "TRUTH" is something different thena "TRUTH" for an artist and different again for a scientist....

But what if we have lost sight of the end of the path, what if, we have no sense of the "TRUTH".. We don't understand it and we don't know it and we don't feel it... The "TRUTH" has become something foreign to us...something external to us and separate to us and very, very far away.....

So how do we search for the "TRUTH' when we don't know what we are looking for?

We have no sense of what the "TRUTH" is or what it means to have the "TRUTH" andthus we have the lost sense of today.....how do we find something when we don't knowwhat we are looking for?

That is the status of today... we are searching for something and we don't know what it is...

So what are you searching for? what "TRUTH" are you searching for? What does it look like?What is it and how do you find it?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

So if we can think about particular, partial aspects of the humanexistence, if we can think about the accidental properties of being human...

properties of birth, of gender, of nationality...if I am born on this side of an imaginary line..I am American... if I am born on that side of the line, I am Canadian.....

if I am born man, I am born of an accidental propertyif I am born women.. it is random and accidental...

if I am born in this family or that family....it is one of chance and accidental.....

if I am born white or black or born into wealth or poverty..it is by chance... accidental......

to decide that a person is their accidental reality..is to decide that a person is their accidental property....you are because you are white..you are because you are male...you are because you are born wealthy

these are accidental properties and we miss the point if we judge by accidental properties...for we are collectively...... human and not definedby our accidental properties........

we are whole and not part..so don't judge by part...by accidental properties...

judge by our unityand not by our accidents of birth.....

for as we divide by our accidental properties,we are divided by them too....but judge a human whole and we become whole ourselves.....

how do you want to see yourself? judge whole and that is how you see yourself judge part and that is how you see yourself....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

If you understand what I have said, then you understand how Descartes is wrong...

UMM, how did you get from point a to point b?

You must understand Descartes first and so I shall summarize....

Descartes wanted to find certainty for the new science...so he decided to try a thought experiment....

He decided to search for certainty by searching through his beliefs and eliminating those beliefs that cannot be held certain...his standard for this is very high.....if you cannot absolutely hold this belief to be true, it must be eliminated....

and so Descartes went through his beliefs...Sensory beliefs can be wrong, so we cannot hold themand even beliefs like mathematical beliefs might be wrong because some evil demon might put these thoughts into my head...So at the end of doubting all beliefs, what beliefs can we still be sureof... certain of?

It occurred to Descartes, that we can be sure of a "I" that is doubting...He build his certainty on the "I" belief.. I am believing, I am......and this is where he made his mistake..... on this "I".........

so let us return to this notion... What is the "I"? what Descartes fail to see is this "I" is really a HUMAN understanding....Animals cannot see the "I" because they cannot rationalize the "I"....But we can... Our human nature is what allows us to understand this "I"....We see the "I" because we are human and this allows us to see the "I"....The bottom line is not the "I" but the Human aspect that allows us to see the "I"....

we see what Descartes means because we are human and that allows us thisunderstanding....Not the "I".......so we return to my thought which is we think in terms of accidental properties... we see a red chair and we think about the red instead of a chair... we mistake the red to be the primary quality of the chair when red is an accidental property and the chair to be the primary property......We see the "I" as the primary property when in fact it is an accidental property.. the Human aspect thatsee the "I" is the primary property, not the "I"..... "I am".. is really the Humannature I have see's the "I am"... "I am" is a accidental property and the part doing the understanding is the primary property.. the human part..... without being human, we cannot make the connection of "I am"......

So we see how Descartes is wrong.... he mistakes the "I am" as the primary aspect of existence when it is an accidental property and being humanis the primary aspect... "I am" means "I am human and because of that, I am"

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

Earlier I brought up the concept of "Who are we? Who am I?When we think of this human being and our existence, we are born into a house already built, but built with ism's and ideologies and paradigms that have existed fromgeneration to generation oftentimes for thousands of years...think Christianity or Islam being passed down for generations....

Now what would an alien culture from say about that simple questionwho am I? Who are we? Let us think about Movie or TV aliens...What would the Vulcan's say or what would a Predator say? Clearly the answer to the question of "Who am I" would be differentdepending on the species......Let us think about a species like the Borg...that species think of itself in a hive fashion... now imagine yourselfin that hive, bee fashion or perhaps a ant, a simple worker ant.....that we can imagine species such as this is interesting...but I can hear someone say, uh, no, I would never be a worker bee or a worker ant and then apply this to an species like the Borg.......

but here is the key to this and that is the question is not about being partof the collective, but about the survival of the species...... the species survived because of its ability to adapt to changing conditions and thisis the criteria one must use to properly understand the question of "who am I"....it must have a aspect of understanding "who am I" in context of the species.....we do not exist independently but as a part of a species... Part of the answerto "Who am I" lies in the species we belong to and part of that understanding ofthe species lies in the framework of ism's and ideologies and paradigms thatdrive the species.......Who am I.. is answered in part by what I do believe in and whatdoes my culture and nation and species believes in.......In part, "who am I" is answered by what I believe in and what my culture and nation andspecies believes in... so once again, let us imagine the Vulcans and one individual Vulcan,call him Spock for simplicity sake.... and how would Spock answer the question, Who am I?In fact, this question does run through both the series and the movies.....Data often wonders about this in the Next generation series...... so this question of "who am I" is not just an individual question, but a questionthat can be collectively asked, Who are we?........

and ask yourself, Who are we? and ask yourself in light of or in terms of our beliefs that we hold, in light of our ism's and ideologies and paradigms thatwe have and are born into...........

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

I am a Christian.....understand here, when you self identify as Christian,you came from a home where the parents even if they are Cino's,(Christians in name only) they at least had Christianity as part of the family structure in terms of ism's, ideology and paradigms..... you were born into that family's collection of ism's that has been carried down from generation to generation to generation... and by self identifying as Christian, even if it is as being a Cino's,you are bringing that building, architecture of ism's and ideologies,and paradigms that houses human beings and has for generations,you are mindlessly bringing those ism's and ideologies andparadigms into the present......without ever questioning or asking if those ism's and paradigms are valid ism's and paradigmsin this day and age..... we are building the present and future withthousands of years old architecture/ism's and ideologies.....Would you build a house with wood and metal and sheet rock thatis centuries old? No, so why would you build an internal house,a mesh of idea's and ideologies and ism's and paradigm's that are thousands of years old? to move forward, we must adapt newism's and new ideologies and new paradigms that more reflect our new environment, our new situation.....we are reacting to the modernworld with centuries old ism's and ideologies and paradigms.... in otherwords, we are in the 21st century and we have 2000 years old ism's and ideologiesto guide us...... no wonder we are lost.... we have an outdated map to guide usin this 21st century..... we must update our maps to match our current conditions..and these new maps are new ism's and ideologies and paradigms.... meantto better allow us to cope with the new modern realities we are faced with....so to self identify as Christian, you are using a 2000 year old map to cope with21st century landscape.... it is no wonder millions are lost.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

The 16 and 17 century are centuries that pursued the "Truth"....the new science was one means and the philosophy that followed thescience meant to defend and create certainty about the new science....but why was science and philosophy so into this idea of certainty....What was this need for certainty?

and this flows from one of the lies about science and philosophy which is that science and philosophy don't take into account...aren't involved with the daily aspects of life... a for example of thisis science and philosophy are supposed to be separate from trials and tribulations of life.... science and philosophy go on regardless ofthe state of the world...Greek philosophy was done in such a way that you had no idea of what was going on in the world while this philosophy was being done... wars and famine and crisis didn't affectthe Greek philosophy.....it was independent of, outside of whatever wasgoing on in the world.... Read Plato and in dialogues that were givenduring the war (the Peloponnesian war) and you couldn't tell that they werein the midst of a long and protracted war between Sparta and Athens...

But in the turbulence of the 16 and 17 century, the philosophical search for certaintywas, in part, due to the uncertainty of the times... The information comingfrom the new world unsettled Europe and the Reformation that was going onfrom roughly 1517 to 1650 caused much chaos and warfare and uncertainty during those years.....and the search for the "TRUTH" was in part due to the uncertainty going on at the time....in other words, unlike in Greek philosophy,the science and philosophy of the 16 and 17 century was reacting to the events of the time......science and philosophy do not operate in a vacuum, the eventsgoing on at the time change, influence and sometimes drive the scienceand philosophy of the time.....so how does the events and drama of our time,influence the science and philosophy that is going on.....well during the 20 century,a violent and angry century, you take a philosopher like Quine whose life spanned the 20th century and he was about logic and set theory and language issues...you couldn't tell from his writings that he lived in a violent and turbulent century...and this is in part, the failure of philosophy.... as it didn't engage in people's lives..talk about the important matters that was going on in people's lives.....

so should science and philosophy follow the Greek example and exist outsideof what is going on or should science and philosophy engage in the concerns of people and their lives?

what is the role of science and philosophy in the lives of average people?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

very few today deny the fact that we are in need of reform...45 was elected as a non-politician to reform Washington (he won't/can't becausehe is a clueless idiot) so we have elected someone to reform Washington..it is in the spirit of the times... about this need to reform ourselves politically and culturally, I am reading about the Reformation in which we see an earlier attempt at reforming the religious and the political....some attempts failed and some succeeded but what is interesting is the need for reform was in large part stoked by the failure of the powers to be to met the reformershalf way....so the spirally out of control by reformers was in part caused by the very actionsof the powers to be... had the powers to be attempted real compromise with the reformers,that would have tempered the reaction of the reformers... the Reformation would not havebe so dramatic, so full of violence....but everyone stuck to their guns and wouldn't even think about compromise and not allowing any type of negotiation to occur betweenthe reformers and the powers to be....this was a world of all or nothing and we must learnfrom that.....the art of the deal, the real deal is that everyone leaves the negotiation thinkingthey had won... in the real deal, everyone comes out with something... it is not a zero sumgame where if one party wins, that means all other parties lose.... this idea of reformers and the powers to be is a long one, going back to the beginning of time.....

So today, everyone agrees that we need reform today..... the question becomesone of, what is to be reformed and why? to those who say, only the political, mustunderstand that we are connected and in this connection we cannot reform part of the system without reforming the whole... each part of the system is connected to every other part of the system....this is why reform of say, taxes, has failed in the pastbecause the reform of taxes is only part of the equation....as taxesare part of the system....you must reform whole parts of the system asreforming parts affects the other parts which must then be reform to matchthe already done parts and so on and so forth.....so we cannot just reform thepolitical and be done with it, no, we must reform not just the political but the economic as the two are intertwined... the political system and the economic systemare just two sides of the same coin and if you go deep enough, they become the same...as I have brought up time and time again.... you have two thoughts that are opposedand then the two thoughts become two sides of the same coin and then they become thesame thing.... think of the concepts of good vs evil... they are two opposed systemsand then they become two sides of the same coin and then they become the same thing....

so reformers and the powers to be have two separate idea' and if theythought about it long enough, they would be two sides of the same coin and then at some point, the same thing......

so in light of these thoughts, what needs to be reformed and why? do you believe that society, culture, the political system need reform? if so, why?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

the question I have asked is simple, Who am I? and the answer tells us everything....

Ask the man from the medieval times and he would have answerthe question of, "Who am I" far differently then we would answer the questionand that is because of the understanding that someone would have answered thequestion by.... they understood themselves not to be separate individuals butas part of the whole... they thought of themselves as existing within a hierarchy....you didn't exist outside of this hierarchy... you didn't separate yourself from thishierarchy...one saw themselves as a piece of the whole... a single brick within the whole building whereas we see ourselves as the building.....recall thatmedieval artist rarely if ever signed their art works... it wasn't about them personally..a concept that we don't understand today... we proudly and loudly sign our name and claim it as ours even if it isn't whereas in the medieval times, the artistas well as the average person on the street was simple just a brick in the wall and nothing more.......

so today when we answer the question of "who am I"..... we might say, we are a Christian... for example...we answer as the medieval man but we mean a far different thing thena medieval man would when we answer, we are a Christian.....

so I answer the question of "who am I" by stating I am a Christian or I am a grocery clerk...

(many answer the question of whothey are by stating their job or their job title.... that is how ingrained this idea of we are as being what our job is... we self identify by our work andnot by any actual reference to ourselves)

what we really say when we say I am a Christian or I am an American,is to say we accept certain values and adapt them as our own....as we our born into our values, recall we are born into an already builthouse of values which are called ism's and ideologies and paradigms...we are born into a situation where the idea that god exists is alreadybuilt into the house we are born.. it is part of the values we live inside of all our lives.....it is a value and we are born into that value...and if we say, I am a Christian as part of the self identification, we we have simple given a rote answer to who we are.....

in other words, to say, I am a Christian is to say, I accept certain values....to say, I am a Christian is to follow that ism, that ideology you were born into....you have simply and blindly followed the ism that you were born into and ifyou defend capitalism, you are simply defending that value you were born into....

to be a conservative, is to accept the values you were born into without any any critical examination..... you accept the idea that the past that has leadyou to today, we call this tradition, and you accept this tradition....that is a conservative... you defend tradition as being the best values to adapt.... if you attack liberals, you are saying their values are wrong....but you do so without any critical understanding of your position...you have blindly accepted tradition as being best... you have accepted the idea that the values your were born into are the values you believe in... the house of your childhood, thevalues of your childhood... the already created values that make upthe house of ism's and ideologies you were born into, are the valuesyou accept....you have done so without any thought given....you have simply accepted those values without any evaluation of theirvalue...or to put it into Nietzsche words, you haven't reevaluated your values......if you attack liberals, you have accepted thatconservative values are your values.... that the values of the houseyou were born into are the values you accept....

a reevaluation of values that Nietzsche calls for isn't what you done....for to do so might mean you might call into question those valuesyou were born into.... that house of values you were born into mightbe wrong... and so, the conservative doesn't think about or wonder about or reevaluate those values.....you simple accept themas a given... as tradition.....what exactly those values are and what theymean are never evaluated because that might cause a shift in those values...so you blindly follow values, you don't really understand or know what they exactly entail....because that is the point of following tradition...you don't have to exam those values or understand those values...they are a given as tradition.....values given to us by authority.....the past which has sanctified certain values is another meansof authority... the medieval times followed authority, be it Aristotle or the church and the authority was never questioned..it was the authority that matter and this following of the valuesof the house your born into is exactly the same thing....it is the values of authority as dictated by the past....and any reevaluation of values might challenge the authority of the past...challenge the idea's and ism's an ideologies and paradigms, you were born into....that is why conservatives don't reevaluate values... it is a challenge to already givenvalues that you were born into, values given to you by authority, the past.....

who am I? is defined by already given values of the past...I am a Christian... is simply stating that I accept the values givento me by the past.....you are defined by the values of the societyyou were born into because if you have simple accepted those values withoutquestion.. you have carried on the values from the past into the present and therefore intothe future without any critical evaluation of those values.. without challenging the authority of the past......

I have often heard conservatives stating that liberals have forsaken thinkingand rational thought and just act on emotion... but they are simple projecting as conservatives often do.... liberals do challenge the values of the past..that is the defining value or defining understanding of being a liberal...we don't accept the past as an authority and we don't automatically accept those values given to us by the past.....we challenge authority... in this casethe past....... that is what being a liberal is defined as.......we reject the past as being an adequate judge of values.... we reserve the right to reevaluate our values in terms of new information and a new environment.....that is why liberals are attacked... we don't automatically accept the valuesof the past like the conservative do....the conservative believes the valuesthat sustained their father and their grandfather is good enough for them...the house of values given as authority is good enough for a conservative....but itisn't for a liberal....

now conservatives will simple say, you are wrong.... that is their standardoperating statement but they will not engage in reevaluating their values..they will simple state that I am wrong without thought to if I am right,....I have revaluated my values hence changes in my core valuesboth politically and philosophical.....

a conservative would never do that.... their core values are values givento them by the past and that past being authority is considered untouchable ......

to reevaluate one's values cannot be conducted by a conservative....because to do so would mean you doubt the authority of the pastand that basic principle cannot be challenged.....

so the question of "who am I" is both a personal statement but alsoa statement of values given to me by society and my parents.."who am I" is a question of what values do I accept.....values created by me or given to me by the house of values I was born into....

so this question of "who am I" lies at the heart of the core values we believe in.....past and present and future lies in this question of "who am I" and the valuesof ism's and ideologies and paradigms that I was born into come into play whenI answer the question... "who am I"?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

History is from the Greek, meaning Inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation.....

Science: science is a systematic search for knowledge whosevalidity does not depend on the particular individual but isopen for anyone to check or rediscover....

Philosophy: from the Greek meaning love of wisdom....

three separate and distinct studies and yet, and yet, they are three aspects of the same search....and quite often they are the same thing, for example when we look at someone like Newton...or Einstein... we can use history and science and philosophy to investigate allthree...

inquiry and investigation....does that mean science or history or philosophy? YES.......

the emphasis on each is a slightly different... but if are you studying Newton,you are involved in history and you are involved in science and becauseNewton was a philosopher, you have philosophy....

the pursuit of, the inquiry for truth can lead one into and from history or science or philosophy......it is a matter of choice which one uses eitherhistory or science or philosophy........

Who am I? I can use science or I can history or I can use philosophy or I can use any combination of those three to discover "who I am?"

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

ok, thinking about history and its uses and thenI was thinking about problem solving and I was thinking aboutour problems of today versus the problems of the past....and I was running through my mind, the various problemsof the past that are present today.....environmental concernsare certainly one of the them... then I thought about income inequality...I recalled that at several points in history that there were battles and attempts at revolution centered around income inequality....Several ancient Greek cities over long periods of time had battles, revolutionsover income equality including Athens....the fighting between the haves andthe have not's is a common theme in Greek history......Rome was ever conscience of the potential of the lower class rising and attempting to take over.. this in somepart explains the bread and circus idea of Rome.. keeping the lower classes occupiedand entertained is part of the secret to keeping the have not's from civil unrest....this theme was ever present during the middle ages especially during the later medieval times, from say 1200 to 1500....in one sense, the Marxist reading of history in light of economics is certainly one way to go in understanding history....reading history in terms of those who have and those who do not and the ever presentstruggle between the two.....you could read the French revolution as a battle between the haves and the have not's...France before the Revolution was an excellent study in income inequality...the vast majority of people were peasants and were never going to be anything elsebut peasants....they had no hope and people without hope have nothing to lose but their chains.....

you could read American history in light of this idea of the have's and have not's......and before the civil war, there was very little income inequality... the vast majorityof people were economically in the same boat......Henry Adams in his book, "The educationof Henry Adams" talks about how his uncle became the first millionaire in America and that was the 1820's or 1830's....this equality helped America become the land of the free and the home of the brave....the American civil war createdhundreds of millionaires (and the civil war didn't have any component of the unrest between the haves and have not's... it was fought on different grounds)so today we have a great deal of unrest and I suggest that it, in part, is becauseof income inequality..... one of the great problems of our age is this income inequality....and it drives the problems of our age not by jealously but by the thought of justice....how is it just that one man or family, think of the Walmart's owners have billionsand that there are American's who lack basic essentials like food and shelterand clean water.... how is that just? the question of income inequality is a questionof justice..... and income inequality is driven by our idea of what it means to behuman...... keeping up with the jones is a ism, a paradigm that helps drivesour current system of income inequality.........

a new idea of who we are is needed... one that doesn't make the acquisition of material goods as the primary function of the human being.... for we are nota species that makes acquisition the primary goal, but as a secondary goal.....think about it.... if we work hard and keep out nose to the grindstone, we toocan achieve the American dream.... and conservatives object to welfare and other social programs because it "punishes" those who already have and rewards those who do not have, thus giving no incentive for thosewith no or a limited income to become "productive" members of society....this whole idea of becoming a "productive" member of society is based on a paradigm, one that certainly is in need of being reexamined....for this idea of being a "productive" member of society is based on a very limitedand shortsided idea of what a "productive" member of society looks like.....a "productive" member of society must contribute to the Gross national product and that is a very limited vision of who we are... and this entire idea of beingproductive is a vision of who we are, an paradigm that excludes many peopleof great note in the past, but today don't meet the expectations of being "productive" for example, we wouldn't call Socrates as a "productive" memberof society or we wouldn't call St. Francis as being a "productive" member of society... because our idea's of being a "productive" member of society must fit certain criteria of producing or adding to the "GNP".... our limited view of who is "productive" and who isn't fits into our visionof who human beings are.... we are economic beings, just as Karl Marxsaid and just as Adam Smith said... and I disagree with this notion.....

and this returns us to our original point which is one of the great problemsof western history has been income inequality which is simply seeingpeople in terms of their production of goods or in their buying of goodsand we must change that, for myriad of reasons, to making human beingsabout what they can achieve, not in terms of production or consumption,but in terms of art and science and philosophy and whatever they can achieve... in other words, we need to reexamine what it means tobe human.. we are not about the economic but about something else....and this in turn is a solution to the continuous problem of income inequalitythat has plagued human beings since the beginning of time....and threatensus today.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

So this next look at problems of the modern age and possible solutions.....

it doesn't take a very hard look at history before one comes across the damage and death and the toll on people that religion has and continues to bring to people....

recall that Socrates was executed on religious grounds....and the death toll from the various religious wars over the centuries is in the millions...that Islamism and Christianity have been fighting each other for over a thousand years....and to what end? it is a struggle that will go on into the foreseeable future, decades and centuries into the future with no end in sight.....it has been and will continue to bea problem going into the future and as a solving problem people, what might be onesolution to this ongoing problem?

more religion has never solved any problem before and I can't see more religionsolving this problem, so one answer is simple.... if you don't want to be part of theproblem and be part of the solution.... end all religious belief you have.....

end your belief in god and end your belief in some higher power and in any metaphysical beliefs you might have..... if the problem with religions is religions, thenone solution is to end the religious belief.... this can be done, one person at a time,without any resulting social ramifications caused by actions taken...if you fail to pay your taxes, this creates social ramifications because it limits the number of people who do pay and those who don't pay, like 45, cause damage to society by narrowing the number of people who paytaxes..... the way to limit the damage taxes do is by increasing the number of people and corporations paying taxes.... increasing, not decreasing... and this leadsus to another point....solutions must be flexible to the problem....solving one problem requires us to limit or eliminate, the question of religion and another problem, the question of taxes requires us to increasethe number of people....this shows us the complicated nature of finding solutions to problems... a flexibility to address a problem withoutresort to ism's and paradigms and ideologies for they are also part of the problem......for a ism demands that the solution fits into that ism and ideology even if the reality is different... the solution must fit into analready given parameters set up by the ism, the ideology or paradigm......the GOP has for decades given us the exact same answer for any economicills that bedevil us and that is tax cuts even though tax cuts has never,ever under any circumstances, be shown to improve the economy.....and this is the failure of the GOP, holding to a failed policy even inthe light of evidence that it has never worked..... this is religious thinkingat work.... holding faith in a action even though the action has never beshown to work.... holding faith in god even though god has never beenshown to exist... this is the exact same faith in tax cuts that has beenshown in the existence of god.... regardless of the evidence otherwise......and this is the failure in the religions... holding the faith regardless ofthe evidence otherwise and in this, we see the failure of religions and beliefs.......if you want to be part of the solution going into thefuture, you need to dismiss god and religion and become freeof destructive beliefs that have so damaged the world.....

free of religions like Christianity and Islam and Buddhist and free of belief in god and a higher power......free yourself and become part of the solution and not part of theproblem.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

a third problem looking for a solution in these times is one of perspective......and the question of perspective is a simple one....how do you view something? by what criteria do you measure what you are viewing? in other words...how do you make judgments on things you see? many here and around the country, indeed many in the world, hate and vilify Liberalsand liberalism... and yet, the modern world is a creation of liberalism... fromthe American war of independence to the modern idea of freedom to concepts we take for granted like conservation of the planet earth... and the right to vote...these are a liberal idea's.......social security and medicare were driven by the leftalong with 8 hour days and overtime pay and safety measure to protect the workers...and yet even after driving all these idea's which has benefited millions, liberal andliberalism is hated by people who use these concepts every single day andbenefit from them every single day..... and yet they can't they see the factthat liberals and liberalism has made their life better in ways they can't even see.....

so from their perspective, liberals and liberalism is some sort of evil and all thewhile, they are benefitting from what liberals and liberalism has done for them....

so we can look at it this way... liberals have offered up solutions to many problems and have been fought by conservatives....yet, conservatism offers up failed solutions like more market choicewhich does nothing... kinda like offering more access to consumers whichmeans nothing because you have to be able to afford that more access but it sounds good, to have more access, it just doesn't mean anything ifyou can't afford it........and the ever present clarion call of tax cuts offeredby conservatives as the answer to everything....

conservatives want more government, they want their benefits, but they don't want to pay for it.....hence the tax cuts....and liberals are more then willing to pay for more government...so who is the government freeloader?

another "solution" offered by conservatives is that people take "personal responsibility" and yet, conservatives refuse to take personal responsibility for anything.... their "solution" is really one of, "you takepersonal responsibility, I don't have to"......has the president taken responsibilityfor actions taken by his administration? he has taken credit for things hehas had nothing to do with like the jobs growth which is just an extension of Obama policies... (the government runs on the prior administration budget for the following year after the president has left... the new budget won'tkick in until Sept. 30, which is the start of the national budget for the next fiscal year)

so what solutions have conservatives offered up for our problems?

feel free to think about solutions offered up by conservatives and solutions offered up by liberals.....

we have global warming, we have pollution, we have a major health care crisis in this country, (now many here will blame Obamacare, ok, so offer up a solution,or give a solution given by conservatives... if the conservatives had solutions, wewould have already passed health care "reform" already... but they don't have anything...so your challenge is simple, offer up solutions, conservative solutions to our problems....

You won't be able to because conservatives have no solutions to any problems,well to be fair, they will always offer up tax cuts to the wealthy.. that is pretty muchtheir answer to everything..... economic solutions to problems that aren't economicis not a viable solution to problems solving.... if conservative thinking is so muchmore viable then liberals thinking, then you should be able to come up with conservative solutions to problems that exist...for that is the point of ideology and ism's and paradigms... they exist to solve problems....if the paradigm or ism doesn't solve problems, what is the point of theism or of the paradigm? if conservatism doesn't solve problems, what is the point of conservatism?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

as I contemplate a response to the question posed by Justice... I have another response....

the demarcation problem....

in the philosophy of science the demarcation problem is a large one andthe problem goes like this... how do we know which sciences are real sciencesand which are pseudoscience? Like is astrology on the same level as astronomy? or is Astrology a pseudoscience and astronomy a real science? the problem comesin do you restrict so much that you leave out real sciences or do you relax thecriteria and allow some pseudoscience in with real science?

This demarcation problem is, in part, why Kuhn wrote his famous book, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"......

so one may ask, why do you care about this problem?

I suspect that philosophy and science and history has a demarcation problemand the problem goes like this, how do we tell where philosophy begins and scienceend and where does philosophy ends and history begins and where are the lines between philosophy, science and history?

Philosophy has been around 2500 years and science was a partof philosophy for over 2000 of those years....it has only been in the lastcouple of hundred years that philosophy and science has separated....

how does history fit into all this?

we all know that philosophy is the love of wisdom...

History comes from the a Greek word meaning Inquiry, knowledgeacquired by investigation.....

Science: what is known, knowledge acquired by study, assurance of knowledge,this word is from the Latin "Scientia"

so, we see that all three words, science, philosophy and history derive from the same basic ideas, inquiry, knowledge, investigations......

now we must use each area, science, philosophy and history to explore differentaspects of our world but each is an inquiry, a search for knowledge.....

so what else do these words suggest to us?

that each of them, by different means, explore what it means tobe human and each explores the human question....who are we, what are we, when are we, how are we, where are we,and why are we? Who, what, when, where, how and why are the 6 questionswe must always ask ourselves... like a good journalist, we must askthese 6 questions constantly.... who, what, when, where, how and why....

I suggest that there is no great difference between science and philosophyand history... each in their own way, explores what it means to be human,each explores how it means to be human and each explores the why of beinghuman.....science says, I am a human and the universe around me looks like this...... and history says, we can know what it means to be human by ourpast actions.......philosophy can say, we are human and it means this....philosophy tries to give the facts that science and history tell us and philosophy tells us the values of those facts... science and history are about facts (facts which arechangeable and not ever set in stone) and philosophy tells us what the valueof those facts....philosophy has failed in part because it operates outside of history,philosophy tries to be isolated from other questions we have about ourselves...Hegel was the first philosopher who tried to incorporate history into philosophyand that is his great claim to fame.... he centered philosophy in history and made us aware that history and philosophy have a common theme......Kant didn't try to connect history into philosophy.... Kant's philosophy wasseparated, isolated from the historical events and happenings of the time...Just like Plato... you can't tell what was happening historically at the time Plato was writing... his philosophy is separate, isolated from not only history, but from life..... think about his idea about the cave and eternalidea's.....those ideas of Plato exist outside of history.....philosophy, true philosophy cannot be separated, isolated from history, isolatedfrom the events of the day.. for those events tell us who we are andhow we are separated from or the same as the people who went before us....

the question facing all three, science, philosophy and history is simple...and all three approach that question from different sides, but the questionsfor all three is still the same...... who is man, what is man, when is man,where is man, how is man and why is man? what is the human experience? and how does the past human experience tells us about us today?

You must approach philosophy from a historical, scientific and philosophical understanding... and all three approaches from the same way, inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation....

about this living creature we call, a human being.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

Justice: 1. being righteous...2. fairness.....3. rightfulness4.reward or penalty as deserved.....5.the use of authority to uphold what is just.....6.the administration of law..7. do justice to.....to treat fairly...

This dry definition doesn't really cover the word "justice" does it?

People have trying to work out what justice is since Plato..The Republic is basically working out the concept of justice...and that was 2500 years ago and we still don't have a good workingnotion of Justice...and I certainly won't solve this problem in this thread but I want to look at what seems to be justice and whatisn't justice... we may not be able to define it, but at least wecan identify it....

I was watching Broadchurch last week and a father who son wasmurdered told his ex-wife that he was looking for "justice for Danny" (danny being his son) and we are familiar with this idea that crime and injustice needs to be punished...it needs justice...now justice seems to be for those who have suffered from crimeor injustice... so can we ask for justice for those who haven't suffered a crime or injustice? it doesn't seem so....so for us to find justice, we need a victim or someone whohas injustice done to them......

now we are trained to think of injustice in terms of the legal or the law...a crime was committed and we are looking for justice.....now is that crime being committed, about a crime committed against a single individual or can the crime be committed againstthe society?

Now punishments for crimes tend to be define as punishments for acts committed against a sole person but is socially punished,the community itself punishes people and the community employsthe police and the judicial system to find and dispense justice in thatcommunity name....so an individual act of one person violence againstanother will bring a response to finding justice from the community..it is considered a crime against the community when one person commits a crime against another person who belongs in the community.....the act of justice is taken away from a single person....justice is a community activity and not allowed to be conducted byan individual....

now we further try to understand justice.... let us give a commonexample... at my work, some people are being hired at a higher ratethen people who have been there for some time....so is it "just" forpeople who have been there for a long time, to be paid less thenpeople who have been there for about 2 minutes? now we don't considerthat to be a justice question because it is an economic question conductedwithin a business corporation.... but if a crime, injustice has been conductedagainst an individual in a business, how is that different than an injusticeconducted against an individual who is just walking down the street and hasbeen attacked? Injustice is injustice is injustice regardless of the natureof the injustice... but that leaves us with a question? how do we know, KNOW, when injustice has been committed? what is our standard for discovering when injustice has been committed? what criteria do we use to understand when injustice has been committed?

but that means we have to understand what is right and wrong, to beable to define what is justice and what is injustice......this is wrong and injustice or this is right and this is justice....

it kinda like the longstanding idea about pornography...I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it.....

but that can either miss justice or miss injustice...

so to return to my idea of justice in the workplace which we considerfar less important then justice in the world outside of the workplace....

why are business held to a different standard of justice then a private citizen?

one argument might be the individual can walk away from injustice committedby a business whereas an individual in the world cannot walk away frominjustice committed by an individual......

so is justice or injustice controlled by this idea that if you haveno say in or any recourse in the action of injustice, it becomesa matter for the state? is justice for those who do not have any controlover the situation? I know of people who have been victims of injusticein the workplace and they sued and by suing, they were fired from theirjob and then other businesses wouldn't hire these individualsbecause of the lawsuit and so they were punished for suing the corporation...justice wasn't served by their attempts to get justice for themselves...

how do we justify this? I have seen this time and time again..attempts to gain justice in the workplace have in the long runcreated far greater injustice for the individual in question.....

women who have reported being raped are often the ones being put on trial by lawyers by character assassinatingthat woman in a trial.. is that justice?

and that is another little brick in the wall...justice for one often comes at a price for some or many...just how far are we to pursue justice?

what is the price for pursuing justice to its logical conclusion? justice is tied to many other aspects we consider important... if justice is to be followed,what other damage are we to accept as a goal for justice...for example, in the private workplace and the workerreceives a large monetary settlement for injustice committedagainst that individual, but that large monetary settlementdamages the business bottom line, it damages the profitmargin of a business which affects a lot of people...

how are we to balance the needs of the one againstthe needs of the many in regards to bringing about justice?

Justice does seem to be a zero sum game....

we see injustice done against individuals all the time and we even see injustice done against a communityby a corporation.. Walmart is committing injusticeagainst its workers by so underpaying them, that theworkers to survive must turn to welfare and other social net programs.... I see that as injustice and others seethat has the cost of a business trying to maximize profits...

so who is right? the bottom line comes down to what you think is the basic of human standards...in other words, if you believe that business should payits worker enough to support themselves even atthe cost of the bottom line, then you have certainexpectations of being human....

and that plays a role in our understanding of justice...what ism's and ideologies and paradigms we haveof society and of people that we bring into our understandingof what justice is?

I believe that by virtue of being human, we have "certain inalienable rights among them, life, liberty andthe pursuit of happiness" ......

as part of being human, we have the right to feed ourselves, to clotheourselves, to have an education... these are certain inalienable rights wehave as being human.... and among those inalienable rights, I believethat we must have justice along with food, shelter and clothing asa basic human right.....

in a very real way, human society is predicated upon justice beingdone within that society, for without justice, the community doesn't havethe stability needed for the society for the society to grow and prosper....the very act of there being justice allows that community to be stable.that very actions of justice allows the community to function better....for justice is a requirement for a society to remain viable and functional...

so if we permit injustice to stand without punishment, we damage a society's ability to remain stable and functional....

so when we don't have justice for example, when the police can killinnocent people without justice, it damages the society becauseit allows injustice to go unpunished and that hurts the faith thatpeople have in the system....

for a society to work, it must, must have a certain numberof people who buy into the system, who believe enough in the systemto work within the system and make it work, but if you damagepeople's faith in a system, they no longer will trust in or workwith a system that allows injustice......

that trust, that faith is key to keeping a system workingand if we don't trust a system to keep justice, then weopt out of a system and that damages the system...

for a system to work, any system, it must have a certainnumber of its parts working at any given time...if enough parts of any system fails to work, the systemcan be damaged enough to stop working.....in other words, if we allow injustice to continue,people will opt out of the system and if enoughpeople opt out, the system will fail...and that is the situation we are facing right now....less then half the people eligible to vote, actuallyvoted.. this is what I mean by opting out of the system..people will no longer engage in a system that allows injustice and if enough people fail to engage,the system will fail.....

this is in part, why liberals search for justice morethen security... we understand that without justicethe society will at some point fail and we are fast approachingthat moment when if enough people opt out of our system, it willfail....

but that isn't justice, that is what happens if we don't follow justice... but we still haven't found out what is justice..or what is injustice for that matter...

more later as we give more thought to this question of justiceor injustice....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

As I have noted before, a liberal desires justice and a conservative desires security...

they seem to be two separate and distinct concepts....

security is one concept and justice is another distinct concept...

yet we have worked out before with good and evil, perhapsthe two distinct and separate concepts are really just two sidesof the same coin and then later they are one and the same....

thesis + antithesis... equal synthesis..

thesis: justice..... antithesis: security....

synthesis: a combination of the two....

for if you think about it....

you cannot be secure if you are unable to have justice...for the concept of security to work, you need justice..for part of security is justice....

and part of justice is security......

one needs the other....

the liberal wants justice and by gaining justice, we gain freedomthe conservative want security and by gaining security, we gain freedom...but what is the connection between justice, security and freedom?

how we approach this problem is in part by the ism's and ideologies and paradigms that we use to approach justice, security and freedom....

we have certain ism's, ideologies and paradigms and it is through the lensof those ism's, ideologies and paradigms that we understand suchconcepts like justice and security and freedom.....

we are raised with certain ism's and ideologies and paradigmsand we never really shake those ism's and ideologies and paradigmsunless we follow Nietzsche and reevaluate values.....for those isms' and ideologies and paradigms are values takingform.....we are born into a certain value set.. given to us by ourparents, our church, our society, the media.... all of which spendsits time, parents, church, media, society, in indoctrinating us into certain values highly held by the parents, church, media and society...

This is the point of education.. indoctrinating the children into values acceptable by the parents, church, media and the society...and we approach such idea's like justice and security and freedomwith the values we are indoctrinated with from birth.....

to escape this indoctrination, we must reevaluate our values in lightof our experiences as human beings..... someone once called a conservative:a liberal who has been mugged.......

we might change our isms, our ideologies, our paradigms because of experiences we have gone through.....orby experiences we see others going through.....

the conservative rails against welfare based on the ideaof the "welfare queen" (an idea that has been discredited BTW)but the conservative has actually never seen a "welfare queen" because they don't exists but the conservative is convinced of the existenceof the "welfare queen" even though they don't actually exists....

in other words, the conservative is programmed to see "welfare queens" even if they don't exists... now this programming might be from birth, this particular ism and ideology and paradigm from parents, the church,the media and society.....but how do we escape this programming from birth?

we must reevaluate our values.......

we must re see our world, we must understand our ism's and ideologiesand paradigms in light of a new look at those isms' and ideologies and paradigms...we must see the world with fresh eyes and without the impact of thoseold ism's, ideologies and paradigms that influence our understanding of the world...

so what if.. security and justice and freedom are all sides of the same coin and then what if.. they are the same thing.......

just like good and evil becoming the same thing, we nowsee that justice and security and freedom are one and the same.....

to be secure in the world, we must have justice and to have justice, wemust have security and to have justice and security, we must have freedom...to attack one is to attack all three for the three, justice, security and freedomare one and the same......what is the demarcation line between justice and freedomand security? how do we tell where justice ends and security begins and whereis the line between justice and freedom? or the line between or security and freedom? this demarcation line that is so important in science is also important in other aspectsof our life.... so tell me, where is the line between justice and security?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

I believe that justice is a greater need for people then security...you can see this in the religious need for people to have justice done, if not in this life, in the next... and you see this need for justice in religion........

for it is a principle point of Jesus.... he remarks more then onceabout how justice is found in the next life...... leaving us to wonderhow does justice denied in this life is sufficient for us to live with..why must we wait for justice in the next life?

the meek shall inherit the earth... this is a form of justice in the next life.....just not in this life....

you don't see this great need for justice with security or with freedom....

if you don't have security in this life, you shall have it in the next...or if you don't have freedom in this life, you shall have it in the next....

that doesn't have the same ring, the same feel as "the meek shall inherit the earth"...

thus we can see from a religious context that this search for justice has been with ussince humans have a religious context to their lives and indeed, religion may havebeen invented to give us a sense that justice denied in this lifetime will be foundin the next lifetime......

in fact, justice plays a strong role in religions all over the world.....if you are just, you shall be rewarded with heaven...a rathercommon refrain of religions......but security or freedom does nothave the same religious context given to them as justice has.....

God can be seen as a judge who dispenses justice to human beings....fail to live to god's standards and he punishes you, live up to it and herewards you.... justice is done in terms of your faith or actions in regards togod and his laws.......

in fact, religions can be seen as an attempt to discover the justice thatis not found in our daily life....we turn to religions because we failto find justice in our day to day life....that shows us the importance of justiceto us human beings.....

but in the 20 century, we cannot fall back on religions to secure for usthe justice we so seek in our lives... as we cannot turn to religions,what do we turn to in some attempt to have justice, even if that we turn to don't exist in real life.... we have created a mythology ofsuperhero's to dispense justice in our world..... we are so in needof justice we have created superhero's like batman and superman tosalve our need for justice......

in fact, our need for justice is so strong, we may be people who seek justice first and foremost.... whereas Aristotle wrote that people seek happiness and theologians wrote that peopleseek god, we see now that we actually seek justice...........

and the great stresses in our society comes from justice being denied,both individually and within the society...... the winter of our discontentment comes from us seeing that our modern age is an age of justice being denied....

the Jews of the holocaust.....Sacco and Vanzetti....the deaths of millions in ourworld wars....we see this in the cultural wars of the last 30 years......

health care is an issue of justice.. for we see that people often are denied properhealth care which is an injustice for reasons like preexisting conditions and the cost ofhealth care.... we deny health care to people because they can't afford it and thatis injustice.... thus leading us back to why liberals value justice over security.....justice denied within a society damages the society... it was once believed in America thatit was better to allow 100 guilty people to go free then one person found guilty who wasinnocent.... we have lost this notion because we want justice and we don't care howwe achieve it and who we hurt to achieve it......

we have allowed our anger and hate to influence our notion of justice......

when we commit injustice, we damage our souls and when we act justly,we improve our souls..... that is why we must seek out and find justiceand do battle with injustice....it is about saving ourselves.... we can find salvation in finding justice.....and this may be the only true way to findsalvation in our searching for justice.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

doubt is the way to wisdom, not certainty, for no one evergained wisdom through certainty... only doubt...

so what if god is an question?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

doubt is the way to wisdom, not certainty, for no one evergained wisdom through certainty... only doubt...

so what if god is an question?

K: so as a question of values.... what if god is a question?

what does this mean?

it seem that one of the key if not the primary question of humans beingsis this question of justice....what is justice? how do we achieve justice? what does it mean to have a "just society"?

perhaps the lesson learned from our understanding that one of the key pointsof religion is justice... how we find justice not in this lifetime but in the next...but justice denied is not justice and justice delayed is not justice.... justice mustbe timely and current for it to be justice........perhaps we can make the equationthat for us, to find salvation means that we must find justice.......

so without religion dispensing justice, how are we to reach justice?

so if god is a question, what else does this mean?

it means that we must understand who this human being creature is, inother terms besides religious.... we see people in relation to god as inthe biblical stories of Adam and Abraham and Moses... we see man explainedin these stories.... but remove the religious and how do we see man now?

context is everything and in what context do we see man?

that might be a flaw we have today, we don't have any type of representationof what man is like in the bible... we have removed the context of man fromour understanding of who we are...

if god is the question, then the question is asking, what is this creature we call man? it calls into question everything we think about who we are and more importantly, who we might become......

if god is the question, then what is our understanding of who we are?

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

as I have noted, we are born into a house filled with values, (the house being human society) and within that house exists valueslike the American mantra... Truth, justice and the American way.....we are, each of us, born into a house that has values held by the familyand societally....values taught by family, church, the state... schools, the media, all of them teaching values.....

the question becomes as we grow up... do we blindly accept those taught valuesor do we question them.... Nietzsche entire written works were about this onefact... he wrote....

"It is not enough to have the courage of our values.... we must have the courage for an attack upon our values"

His entire reevaluation of values is about this very point of, do we accept our already given values or do we reevaluate them in light of our experiences,in light of new information, in light of new technologies........

the entire Renaissance was a question of reevaluation of values of the Medieval period....are the values that the medieval man livedby, are they values we should accept or should we be the creators of ourown values... that is the entire question of the Renaissance! and that questionwas continued by Descartes and Spinoza and Newton and Leibnitz among others.....

so the values we have been born into like Capitalism and democracy and truth and justice and the American way.... are we brave enough to begin our own reevaluation of values....do those values really offerus the answers we need or do we need to reevaluate them?

I think the answer is obvious..... we must, in light of our current place in history,we must begin a reevaluation of values..... the values that have sustained us forcenturies have begun to crumble.... those values have no longer kept up with us, with theour current experiences and our current situation and we must be the creators of new valuesthat take into account our new experiences, our new technologies, our new way of thinking......our ideologies, our ism's, our paradigms have not kept pace with the new experiences and new technologies.... we are living new experiences and new technologies with old ideologies and old ism's and old paradigmsand that is, in large part, the problem we face today... we are poring new wineinto old bottles, old wineskins.....and the old wineskins are being stretched beyond their ability to handle the new wine...... just as the new ism's and ideologiesare being pored into old institutions and old way of seeing things and the result is what we see today... chaos and feeling unsettled and the fear many peoplefeel today.... that fear is ruling the day and allowing us to vote for totally inept clowns like 45......

reevaluate and pour new wind into new wineskins

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

Nietzsche often called for dancing, dancing on the edge of the abyss.....

perhaps we should......

most people search for, demand for certainty, for security, for a safe and secure life...

what if, what if that wasn't the goal... what if the reality is, we should be searchingfor doubt and uncertainty and dancing on the edge of the abyss......

There is nothing that is certain....we cannot just accept the proposition thatall of life is searching for something to ground our beliefs on, too create thatwhich is certain......

we see that in life there is not certainty..... we live from moment to momentin a universe that is full of uncertainty and doubt and chaos.....

let us learn to dance to the abyss that has doubt and uncertainty and chaos....

We imagine that we need a safe and secure place to grow.... but look outside yourwindow... we see a whole growth of life in the wild, outside in unsafe and uncertainworld......

all of life has grown in a wild, chaotic, uncertain world..... look about nature...what is certain about nature? nature is chaotic and uncertain and full of doubt.....it has nothing certain about it and yet life thrives there..... perhaps our failure hasbeen to create certainty and safety and security when we should be dancing within chaos and uncertainty and doubt....

the Greeks were fond of logic and order and symmetry and yet, yet theyhad chaotic and disorderly side of dancing to Dionysus... they learnedto integrate their need for order and certainty and symmetry with theirchaotic and uncertainty and doubtful aspect of their lives.....

a trick we certainly haven't mastered.......

humans have a chaotic and anarchistic need..... sometimes we feed onanarchism and chaos and uncertainty.... we must learn to incorporate that into who we are.....The "Purge" movies seem to capture that need... (movies I have yet to see)

as I am old, my days of chaos have passed and yet, I believe in doubt anduncertainty...... we can separate out chaos from doubt and uncertainty......

sometimes, sometimes.... it thrills the soul to destroy... sometimesit is fulfilling to knock down a building or create chaos...but the rational, logical mind rebels against this creation of chaos and uncertainty.....and that is the struggle.... finding the balance between this need for chaos and uncertainty with the need for rational, logical, certain thought and life......

we have yet to find that balance........

the rational, logical mind rebels against chaos and uncertainty becauseit know the energy it takes to create something is much harder the energy to destroy something....

we bounce between this need to build and create and this need to destroy and create chaos......

finding this middle ground was the work of Nietzsche....once again, no matter where I go, Nietzsche has already been there.....

the young want chaos and uncertainty and doubt and the old wantcertainty and safety and security.... we can have both if we accept the fact we need both.....

or said another way.....the right fights for certainty, security and safety...the left fights for doubt and chaos and uncertainty.....

let us learn to accept that which is doubt and chaotic, uncertain.....all the while building a world where we are safe and secure...

we can have both once we understand the need for both......

learn to dance next to the abyss and you will achieve security and safetyit makes no sense but it is true... for often the truest part of life makeslittle rational sense.....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

Upon further reflection, I see that the search for god is the search for certainty and security and safety whereasthe search for the dark side, those who believe and follow thedevil is a search for doubt and uncertainty and chaos.....

I don't mean this search for god and the devil as literally a search for a god or a devil but what they stand for...good and evil.... for good is certainty and safety and securitywhereas evil is doubt and uncertainty and chaos.....

we cannot have one without the other...we must unite or combine the two, good and evil, intoa understanding of life... the meaning of life is...... whereaspart of the answer to the meaning of life is this union ofgood and evil...... the need for chaos must be balance with the need forcertainty..... at times, we need and must create chaos and other times,we must have and need certainty.......the trick is knowing when the time for chaos has come and knowing when certainty is needed.....

the dance on the abyss require us to understand the balance between good and evil.... the balance between certainty and doubt...the balance between chaos and security......

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.

is to kill the flowerand how do we hope to understand that which is dead...

order, chaos, beauty, ugliness, certainty, uncertainty....

we cannot separate them out at the cost of our soul....

Kropotkin

"Those who sacrifice liberty for securitywind up with neither." "Ben Franklin"

The RNC has announced that's its changing the Republican emblem from an elephant to an condom because it more clearly reflects the party's politicalstance: a condom stands for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation,protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others.